


a violent flash of purple

by hudders-and-hiddles (huddersandhiddles)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Love Confessions, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Sex Toys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-08 03:50:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12856131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huddersandhiddles/pseuds/hudders-and-hiddles
Summary: When Sherlock accidentally drops his towel, he ends up revealing a whole lot more than he’d intended.





	a violent flash of purple

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always to Darcy for the beta. <3 And thanks to Lockedinjohnlock for the [podfic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13678194)!

There’s a sharp gasp somewhere behind him, and Sherlock freezes.

John has been back at Baker Street for two months. Just two months after five long years away. So it would be understandable, really, for Sherlock to sometimes forget John’s home again.

It is not, Sherlock thinks, understandable for him to have forgotten when he bends over to pick up the bath towel he just dropped in the midst of digging through a kitchen drawer for a bottle of lube he had hastily stashed away after an experiment last week. 

Doubly so when there is a bright purple silicone plug up his arse, which is now not-so-conveniently aimed somewhere in the general direction of his flatmate.

At the sound of John’s gasp, obscenely loud in the uncomfortable silence of the flat, an embarrassed flush of heat courses through Sherlock’s veins, burning scarlet beneath his skin. What exactly is the protocol for accidentally flashing currently-in-use sex toys at the man who doesn’t know you’re in love with him? Sherlock flies through the halls of his mind palace looking for some kind of appropriate response and comes up, quite understandably, empty. 

But since the same can’t be said for his arse, the best thing he can think to do is stand up, cover himself, and hide in his room until he dies. It’s a pretty solid plan, all things considered. He’s had a good go at life up until now; compared to this mortification, death won’t be so bad.

The towel is almost at his fingertips when John speaks, and Sherlock freezes again. “Is that—”

They’re both adults here. They’re both well aware of what  _ that _ is, so Sherlock doesn’t deign to reply. 

Perhaps he should just leave the towel, he realises. It’s not as if he has any modesty left to recover here anyway.

He stands again, as calmly as he can muster given the situation, and forces himself not to shiver when the plug brushes against his prostate.

“Do you, uh—”

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of possibilities for how that question could end, and thankfully, each and every one of them goes unsaid. Sherlock closes his eyes and counts to three, willing John to just let it go, to just let him disappear into his room and let this remain unspoken for the rest of his very short existence. 

Instead there’s the shift of a cushion and two hesitant footsteps. Coming closer, not leaving. Sherlock tells himself not to look,  _ commands _ himself not to look, but never one for listening to instructions, he glances over his shoulder anyway to find John watching him, wide-eyed. 

Not horrified though.

Hungry.

John presses a hand to the front of his denims, adjusting himself, and it’s Sherlock’s turn to gasp.

John’s eyes work their way from his arse to his eyes and back down again. He licks his lips, and Sherlock can feel the heavy throb of his own blood, hot and thick, in his temples and in his fingers and in the now-interested swell of his prick. John licks his lips again and with visible effort raises his gaze back to meet Sherlock’s, his chest heaving. 

Whatever careful dance they’ve been doing around each other these past few months, these long and lonely years, is shattered by two words:

“Can I—”

Sherlock isn’t totally sure what the rest of the question is, but he’s nodding yes before John can find it. Whatever it is, if John wants it Sherlock will give it to him. 

He’s already given John his life.

He can give him this, too.

John steps closer, and Sherlock closes his eyes again, turning his face away. He expects a rush of hands, clutching and pulling and shaping his spine into something sordid. He expects it fast and hard and over before John can realise what it is that they’re doing. He expects hunger and lust and the excuse of the heat of the moment.

He does not expect the kiss John places precisely between his shoulder blades, lips smearing a shaking breath into his skin. He does not expect fingers, warm but trembling, settling gently onto the curves of his hips. He does not expect John’s hesitance in the face of Sherlock’s ready agreement. 

“Are you sure?” John asks. “I only want this if you want this.” 

The caution of it is too tender, like a bruise over a broken bone, and Sherlock swallows against the tickle in the back of his throat. “I want this.”

It’s too much of the truth and not enough of it at the same time. He wants this like he wants air. He wants it like he wants another hole punched through his chest.

John’s hands snake across his belly, pulling him back until he can feel the buttons of John’s shirt against his spine, the press of denim, and beneath it the hardness of John’s cock, against the curve of his arse. He drops his head and tries to keep breathing as John’s hands make their way up his chest and back down his sides, up his back and his neck and into his hair, and then down his shoulders and his arms to the tips of his fingers. They settle back onto the crest of his hips as John lowers himself carefully down onto his knees. 

There’s a press of lips against the back of his thigh. And then another, lower. And another. Sherlock shivers at the cool, wet trail of them down his left leg, and by the time John makes it back up the right, he’s harder than he’s ever been in his life.

John’s hands slide down to cup the ample curve of his arse, his fingers kneading gently into the muscle. “Can I?” he asks again, and Sherlock’s answer rattles out of him.

“P-please.”

Sherlock can hear him swallow. “Put your hands on the worktop for me, yeah?” He bends forward a little, doing as John asked, and with John right behind him now, it leaves him feeling more exposed than he’d felt at the start.

John’s fingers trace down to find the end of the plug, and shivery sparks ignite in Sherlock’s belly as he rocks it up and then down, twisting it a little, letting Sherlock feel the press of it inside of him. He sweeps a kiss across the base of Sherlock’s spine and then, sitting back again so that he can watch, gently pulls. He takes his time, the stretch of it bittersweet as the thickest part slides free and he eases it the rest of the way out.

John’s thumbs swoop in toward the center then, parting his cheeks and holding him open. Sherlock holds his breath. Waiting.

Then:

John’s tongue, slick and warm, presses against sensitive skin, and Sherlock sobs, his knees buckling against the sensation. He presses his hands harder into the worktop, trying desperately to hold himself up as John licks and kisses him, his tongue flicking and circling and dipping inside. The sound of it is lewd—it’s wet, and it’s messy, and it’s eager—and Sherlock’s cock throbs when John gives a little grunt as he pushes his tongue in even farther.

It’s too much. 

It’s not nearly enough.

“John,” he chokes out, hardly even a whisper. He turns back over his shoulder but has to close his eyes against the sight of John with his mouth pressed to Sherlock’s arse. “J-John.”

John stops immediately, pulling away, and Sherlock sucks in a trembling breath before he can look at him again.

The words float out on the exhale.

“Fuck me.”

John freezes, halfway through wiping the back of a hand across his mouth and chin, glossy and slick. “What? Are you—are you sure?”

Sherlock straightens his spine, turning halfway toward him. If this is going to be the only time, he’s going to make sure he gets everything he wants out of it. “Please,” he says again, trying his damnedest not to sound like he’s begging. “Fuck me.”

The seconds pass by agonizingly slow, until: “Yeah,” John says, like he’s coming back to himself from far away. Like a light bulb switching on. “Yeah. God. Okay.” And then he’s scrabbling at the buttons on his shirt, sending the last one pinging across the kitchen when he can’t be bothered with it any longer. The denims go and then the pants, too, and Sherlock gets his first look at him, compactly muscled and dusted in fine, pale hair, the faded white star of a bullet hole in his shoulder and the thick, rosy cock jutting out between his legs.

They stare at each other, bared almost down to their bones, Sherlock tucking all his unsaid words away behind his ribs and sternum, femur and mandible. He hides them all away from the cool fluorescent light of reality because there’s no place for them here where John could see.

It’s sex. Nothing more.

But then John closes the distance between them, pulling Sherlock down into a lingering kiss. It’s uncoordinated and hard, made brutal by time, by desperation, by the thundering depths of longing that Sherlock has too long tried to ignore. But then John gentles it into something softer. Something tender. Something so delicate it aches deep in the marrow of Sherlock’s bones.

And when John’s hands settle again at his hips, a steadying comfort as cocks brush over angles and curves, as John’s mouth makes its way down the vulnerable length of his neck, Sherlock realises this isn’t just sex. With all that he feels for John, it never could be.

This will break him.

“Stop,” he whispers, terrified it’s already gone too far. Terrified there is no coming back past the line they’ve already crossed.

John takes a step away, his face warm with concern. 

“I can’t—I can’t do this.” He takes a long, watery look at John, unsure if it will be the last. 

“I’m sorry,” John says. “Is it—Is this too much? I thought you—We don’t have to—”

“No,” Sherlock cuts in. It’s important, if he’s going to salvage any of this somehow, if there’s anything left to salvage, that John doesn’t blame himself. “No. I’m— _ I’m _ sorry. This was my fault. I’ll just—” He turns and steps carefully toward his bedroom, mustering whatever dignity he has left to walk and not run.

“Sherlock, wait,” John calls after him, and he squeezes his eyes closed to stop the tears threatening to fall. 

_ Just let me go. Please. Just let me hide. _

“We don’t—” John steps closer but blessedly does not touch him. “We don’t have to do anything,” he says to Sherlock’s back. “Nothing at all. If you don’t want. No—no sex. No kissing. No touching, if you don’t want that. We can get dressed and, and just watch telly or something. I don’t know. Just—just stay.” His tone sounds too close to the wild pleading in Sherlock’s own head. “Please stay.”

_ He’s trying to be kind, _ Sherlock thinks, and as much as he appreciates the gesture, he’d rather disappear into the darkness while he still has secrets left to hide there.

“Please,” John says again. “I want—I want to be with you. However you want to be with me.”

_ That’s unfair. _ The words rub against the red, raw edges of Sherlock’s heart, and he can’t take the pain of it anymore. He turns on John, towering with fury. “However I want to be with you? However I want to be with you. Let me tell you how I want to be with you, John Watson.” John shuffles a half step back, and it feels like victory. “I want to wake up with you and spend all morning in bed. I want to go to bed with you and not get any sleep. I want to have late brunches and early dinners and lunch in that little cafe in Soho you don’t think I know that you love. I want to solve crimes and chase killers and never have to worry because I know you’re always a step behind me. I want to never again have to introduce you to someone as my friend because you are and always have been something more. I want to grow old with you and retire with you and someday far down the road die with you so you can’t leave me here alone. That is how I want you, and that is  _ never  _ how you have wanted me. So please. Just let. Me. Go.”

His chest heaving, he pulls himself up tall and proud, daring John to pity him, to tell him to stay again, as if this could all be forgotten with a laugh.

But John doesn’t tell him to stay. Instead he looks away, his mouth twisting like he’s trying to mold words into shape. He blinks hard and rubs a hand across his nose and looks up at Sherlock again then, with eyes wet and shining. “That is  _ always _ how I have wanted you, Sherlock Holmes.” His voice is thick and brittle as concrete in his throat, and it cracks before he gets to the end. “Always.” 

Sherlock blinks and blinks and blinks again.

John steps closer, close enough that Sherlock can feel the heat of him, the long-banked embers of truth flaring up into a flame. “Do you honestly think I would have touched you if I didn’t—Jesus. I—I thought you knew. I thought—I mean, you’re… you. I thought you’ve always known.”

_ Known? Known what? _ He isn’t sure he even knows what’s happening right now. He isn’t sure he’s ever known anything in his entire life.

“I just—” John laughs, but it sounds more like a sob. “I thought you knew, and you just. Y-you didn’t want me. That way. That you didn’t lo—” 

Sherlock’s eyes go wide as the horrible reality of it all sets in. “How could you think—” 

But he knows how. The same way he’d thought John couldn’t ever. They’d missed each other and not realised it, slipping past like friends in a crowd, each too caught up in finding their way through to recognise the other.

Sherlock laughs. 

He laughs because it’s ridiculous.

They’re standing naked in their kitchen, with flagged erections and sex toys on the floor, sharing secrets they’d seemingly both thought they’d take to their graves. Of all the frankly preposterous situations they’ve gotten themselves into and out of over the years, this is somehow the most and least ridiculous of them all. So Sherlock laughs and John joins him, their shoulders quaking with it, joy and relief spilling out of their mouths in equal measure.

“Come here,” John says, when they’ve caught their breath. “Let me kiss you again.”

His hands find the dip of Sherlock’s waist, and this time when their lips meet, there is no fathomless ache, no thundering desperation. Instead there is truth, blossoming purple and fresh, like a bruise across their mouths.

When John finally pulls away, Sherlock knows the shape of his mouth. It’s a potent revelation, and it takes a moment for him to store it away.

“What do you want?” John asks when he opens his eyes. “Right now?”

The list of things Sherlock wants is longer than John could possibly imagine. But there is one thing—one fantasy he has come back to again and again. 

“Can I—” He flushes deep crimson but makes himself say it. “Can I suck you?”

“Oh my god.”

“Ok, no—” Sherlock croaks, his throat closing with panic. He’s ruining this already. “Just forget it.”

“No, no, it’s not that.” John grabs his hand to keep him from slinking away. “I just. Those words. From your mouth. It’s—God, it’s like something out of a fantasy.”

The fear slinks back into its usual place between his ribs, and Sherlock smirks. “Oh. You have no idea.”

John’s eyes twinkle with mischievous delight. “I think I just might actually.”

_ Oh god. _ John has had fantasies about him. About this. 

Something about that thought makes this all suddenly, startlingly real. John wants him. Wants him the way he wants John.

“Bedroom?” Sherlock asks, and John nods. 

“Bedroom.” 

Sherlock pulls him along as quick as he will follow, skidding to a halt in front of the bed and throwing back the duvet. Which is where he encounters a problem. 

A thick, 8-inch long, flesh-coloured and veiny problem lying right in the centre of the mattress.

“Ummmmm…” Sherlock can’t seem to move or think of anything at all to say. He just keeps embarrassing himself, and no matter how hard he tries to will this particular embarrassment to just disappear somehow, there it stays.

Until John crawls onto the bed and places it on the bedside table. “Is that what you were, um, warming up for?” he asks, leaning back on his elbows and giving Sherlock the full view of him. He isn’t ashamed at all, not by Sherlock’s toys or being here bare in Sherlock’s room or any of it, and Sherlock loves him a little harder.

“You don’t—you don’t mind?”

“That you were gonna have a wank or that you have toys to help?” He chuckles and shakes his head. “I don’t mind any of that, and neither should you. I’ve got my own upstairs if it makes you feel any better.” It takes Sherlock several long, dizzy breaths to recover from that revelation; it seems to be a pattern for this evening. “Probably a bit smaller than that, mind, but still…” John shrugs it off and rolls to his side, patting the bed next to him in invitation.

Sherlock carefully crawls in to join him, lying on his side with a few tentative inches of space between them. John’s fingers slip across the distance, up his belly, and onto the crest of Sherlock’s hip, which seems to already be a favourite spot. 

“In case you’ve forgotten,” he says, “I did have my tongue up your arse just a few minutes ago, so it’s not like wanking is really a surprise.” Sherlock can feel the pink heat licking up from the planes of his chest to the curves of his cheeks, and John leans across the stretch of sheets between them, stopping just shy of his lips. They barely brush across Sherlock’s as he whispers, “You’re gorgeous when you blush,” and Sherlock presses forward the rest of the way to silence him.

Kisses move from mouths to jaws to necks to shoulders, while fingers find the peaks of nipples and the dips of scars. And when John rolls onto his back, Sherlock chases him down, finding himself caught between strong thighs with a cock poking into his hip and reminding him of his request.

If there’s an etiquette to be observed here, he doesn’t know the rules of it, but the soft, little huffs and moans John makes as Sherlock works his way down his chest and across the quivering span of his belly seem encouragement enough. Still, he thinks it’s best to be sure, so he pauses, looking up at John through the vee formed by his thighs. His voice is husky with want as he asks, “Is this alright?”

John peers down at him for only a moment before his eyes squeeze shut and his head drops back against the pillow. “Please.”

The tip of Sherlock’s tongue presses firm against the base of John’s prick and traces a thin, wet line up the length. Just before it reaches the head, he moves back to the bottom and follows it up again with a row of open, overlapping kisses, slick and soft and slow. John’s hips wriggle in anticipation as he nears the top again, but Sherlock doesn’t give him what he wants. He moves lower once more and flattens his tongue against John, feeling every inch of velvet skin as he licks a broad, full stripe up the length of him, over the tip, and slips his lips down around the head. 

He stills for a moment, his tongue wrapped against the underside, memorising the tremble of John’s breath and the brush of his fingers against the sheets. And then he moves, sliding down and up again. And again. And again. Until his mouth learns the shape of him, his tongue and his lips mapping out every ridge and every dip and every smooth stretch in between, all the places that make John gasp and make him sigh and make him moan. Sherlock learns them all, well enough to navigate them in his sleep.

A hand brushes his hair back off of his forehead. “Sher—Sherlock.”

He looks up, his lips still stretched wide around the shaft, and John all but collapses back into the mattress, rattling out a dusty, groaning laugh.

“Christ,” he says to the ceiling. “You have got to take my cock out of your mouth before I can look at you.”

Sherlock slides off the end and frowns. “Not good?”

“Too good,” John corrects. “I could almost come just from that.” He raises himself up on his elbows. “Get up here, you.”

Reluctantly, Sherlock presses a kiss to the head of John’s cock and crawls up to lie beside him. On the bright side, that gives John much easier access to kiss him, and that’s exactly what he does.

“You taste like me,” John says when they come up for air. “It’s incredibly sexy.”

Sherlock raises an eyebrow at him. “Is it?”

“Very,” he confirms with another kiss. “Should I show you?”

He’s already halfway down Sherlock’s torso before Sherlock manages to nod. This isn’t a fantasy he’s ever had, and the very idea of it knocks him breathless: he could never even in the depths of his imagination picture John wanting to do this. But here he is, in Sherlock’s bed, eagerly settling down between his thighs and looking at him like there is nothing that would make him happier.

He presses a kiss into the crease of Sherlock’s hip and then, taking an entirely different strategy than Sherlock had, slips his mouth straight over the tip of Sherlock’s cock. A surprised  _ oh _ punches out of him, his legs squeezing against John’s shoulders. When John laughs, Sherlock can feel it rumbling through him, branching out along his bones like lightning. “Relax,” John tells him before sliding his mouth over him again, engulfing him in slick heat. 

With effort, Sherlock presses his thighs out, flat against the bed, and John hums his approval, shifting against him to accommodate the slight change in angle. It’s both brilliant and tortuous, as it gives John access to more of him, which he takes advantage of by adding his hand to the mix, sliding it up and down after his mouth in an unending onslaught of sensation. 

It only stops, briefly, when John pauses to wet two fingers on his other hand. They slip down past his bollocks, circling. “Is this okay?”

“Yes,” Sherlock pants, already wriggling down toward them.

John slides one finger in, working it in and out a few times before adding the second just as he pulls Sherlock’s prick back into his mouth. The corner of the sheet pops up over the edge of the mattress as Sherlock bunches his fists in the fabric. His spine curves in a high arch that lifts the small of his back from the bed.

“Fuck,” John croaks, the word rough as gravel in his throat. “You’re incredible.” His fist keeps slipping over Sherlock’s skin, and his fingers keep moving in and out and in and out, and Sherlock feels electric; every nerve, every cell, burns incandescent in gold. “Can—Can I finish you like this?” John asks. “God. I want to watch you come.”

He twitches his fingers into a curve, and Sherlock all but howls. “Oh my g—John. Oh god.” John does it again, Sherlock writhing around him, completely lost to the feeling. “Please. Plea—”

Every ounce of his focus rushes down, blood-hot and throbbing between his hips. John’s hands move faster, working in tandem to pull him apart at the seams. The tension builds in his thighs, in his shoulders, in his spine, muscles going rigid, skin sticky with sweat, setting his whole body trembling. John’s palm twists over the slick, shining head of his prick, once, twice more. 

And Sherlock shatters like glass.

It takes what feels like hours to piece himself together again. Distantly he can hear John saying something, but he can’t make it out over the thrum of his heart beating in his ears.

Somewhere down around his knees and ankles, the bed shakes and shakes.

Laughter, Sherlock realises. John is laughing. He looks down past the sticky swell of his belly to find John grinning up at him, wild-eyed with delight. “Do you think there are any neighbours you didn’t manage to wake?”

“We’ll have to try harder next time, just to be sure.” Sherlock collapses back against the pillow and almost immediately bolts up again. “Did you—”

“Nearly,” John says, crawling up over him on all fours, revealing the still-hard, heavy length of him. “Christ, I think this is the hardest I’ve ever been in my life.”

“I’m sure I can help with that,” Sherlock says, already reaching for him. John settles his weight even across Sherlock’s hips and bends down to kiss him. Sherlock can taste himself in John’s mouth, and he’s right—it’s powerfully sexy, appealing to some primitive part of him that beats its chest and howls  _ mine _ out into the night.

John kisses him and kisses him and kisses him, messy smears of lips on lips, both of them panting for breath as Sherlock works his fist in long, firm strokes between them. John’s hips rock into every pump as he gets closer, and Sherlock presses a hand to his chest, urging him to sit up. “Let me see. Let me—Please.”

So John shifts back, fingers splayed wide against Sherlock’s ribs, as he rolls with the slick motion of Sherlock’s hand. “Fuck,” he moans, and Sherlock tightens his grip and works him faster. “Like that. Yeah. Please, Sher—Oh fuck. Just like that.” He sucks a breath in sharp through his nose, and everything stills, a single heartbeat frozen on the precipice. 

Sherlock pulls him over the edge, and he comes hard, with a groan that echoes deep in Sherlock’s chest. It’s carnal and messy and gloriously real, and Sherlock thinks it may be the most incredible thing he’s ever seen in his life. John collapses down onto him, loose-limbed and heavy, smearing humid, hot-breathed kisses across his collarbones and into the curve of his neck, their chests and stomachs heaving against each other as they find their breath, together.

When John finally slides off to his side, drifting closer and closer to sleep, Sherlock watches the fluttering of his lashes and the soft smile that doesn’t seem to fade, and wonders if he should say the words that have been hiding under his tongue.

John snuggles closer, rubbing his nose against Sherlock’s cheek and pressing a quick kiss firm against his mouth. “Tell me t’morrow.”

Sherlock pulls his head back, looking down at John in surprise. “What?” He’s not sure if he’s more startled that John knows what he wants to say or that he wants Sherlock to wait to say it.

It takes a long, slow blink for John to process the one-word question, but he rallies himself back from the edge of sleep and looks at Sherlock from across the pillow. “I want to. Be properly awake. I want to r’member it.” He brushes a soft, sluggish hand across Sherlock’s cheek and into his hair. “We can get up and—” A yawn, deep and wide. “And clean the kitchen, so Mrs H doesn’t have a heart attack.” He closes his eyes again and snuggles a little farther under the duvet. “Mmm, maybe have some brek. And then. Then you can tell me.” He pulls Sherlock back across the mattress and rolls halfway on top of him, an arm and a leg thrown over him protectively as he presses close and buries his face in Sherlock’s neck. “‘nd I’ll tell you, too.”

Sherlock nudges his nose against John’s temple, breathing him in. He’s right, of course. He’s always right. So for now, Sherlock lets the comforting weight of him drag him down toward sleep, relaxed and warm and happy.

The words have kept for six long years. They can last till morning.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr as [hudders-and-hiddles](http://hudders-and-hiddles.tumblr.com).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] a violent flash of purple](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13678194) by [Lockedinjohnlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockedinjohnlock/pseuds/Lockedinjohnlock)




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